


Birds Aloft

by Maleficent



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/F, F/M, I love my strike force children with the passion of a thousand burning crests, M/M, Multi, Post-War, and still they try to mold peace from what they're given, black eagle strike force, black eagles - Freeform, they clamored through war to see the world was not what they thought it would be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-07-29 23:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20090461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maleficent/pseuds/Maleficent
Summary: Post-War. Black Eagles Strike Force. Multi Pairing Drabbles. (SPOILERS for Black Eagles route)The war ended among the ash and so they must rebuild peace from it. The Black Eagle Strike Force learns to live in the new world they carved from tyranny while helping shape the future. Birds aloft, they continue on.(Pairing tags will be updated as they appear.)





	1. Marriage Vows

Byleth recalled the sheer elation of pressing quill to parchment, of eagerly watching as Hubert did the same before soaking up what she had just written.

_Byleth von Vestra  
_

It was dizzying to behold, especially as her new husband kissed her hand and declared his life long fealty to their joined happiness. 

In the presence of the Emperor, they had bound their lives within a registry. Their beloved Edelgard had wept from joy. 

“I had been so worried,” Edelgard had said. “That I had created a world where you two, who I have always depended upon most, could not find peace.”

Byleth had smiled something soft and tender as Hubert had declared her worries nonsense.

Byleth did not feel soft and tender, presently.

The ring, which Hubert had procured a few days into the Harpstring Moon, felt heavy curled about her finger, a small paperweight atop the bundle of parchment in Byleth’s lap.

‘_Perhaps that is why the carriage travels slowly_,’ she dryly mused.

Byleth had never sat in a carriage to _anywhere_. The map of Fódlan had always unfolded to her by foot, or horse, or cart. Even the war had not sat her in a carriage. 

It made her feel callous to realize that peace was stifling and that her ring felt too tight. _And she did not like carriages._

“Do be _careful_, you’ll wander too far from my grasp,” Hubert said.

Byleth glanced in his direction and, after a moment, about the carriage and offered a bland jest out of long worn habit.

“Where could I wander in this box,” she said. 

Her husband dropped the parchments he had been perusing to his side, eyes piercing. Byleth supposed they never ceased to pierce, but at times they seemed all knowing, as they did now.

“Your thoughts,” he supplied.

_‘I don’t think I’m meant to be a wife or ride in carriages_’, Byleth wanted to say. 

Instead, she settled for “what will we do now.”

Hubert reached forward to tap the bundle of parchment on her lap.

“We two shall rid the empire of those lurking in Emperor Edelgard’s shadow, once and for all. Now that the war has ended, we no longer have need of the tenuous alliance that held us to those villains,” he said.

Byleth nodded.

“And what of...._us_,” Byleth asked with enough hesitance to give Hubert pause.

“What _of_ us,” Hubert countered.

“Our marriage. Or did you forget?”

Hubert let his brow rise at his wife’s attempt at misdirection. He moved to take her hand and rub his fingers over the ring Byleth wore and said, “I could hardly forget such a life altering occasion. I wonder, do you _wish_ me to forget that you are my wife?”

Byleth averted her gaze, stricken from the accurate blow. 

Hubert smirked, his eyes ever piercing.

“_No_. It’s simply that,” Byleth started. 

Hubert enclosed his hand around hers, their rings meeting the other’s flesh, and Byleth’s heart beat a dizzying _allegro_.

“It’s simply that, I don’t know how to be a wife. Let alone, Champion of the Emperor, Countess Byleth von Vestra,” she admitted. 

Hubert chuckled and was met with a dark look from Byleth. 

“An entire war was pressed upon your shoulders and yet _this_ is the first I’ve heard you so uncertain. What beast do you behold in our marriage that we two can’t slay,” he asked.

Byleth sighed. Certainly, such a happy thing as love should not be so intimidating. 

“You say that we will bring down Edelgard’s uncle and his awful sort, but what of...children, and keeping a household? Or keeping relations with dinners and balls or governing Vestra and implenting all the newly decreed changes there? If we are both hunting down our Emperor’s enemies, then who will do all that,” Byleth said blushing, feeling as though she had said too much. She rarely spoke more than two sentences, after all.

Hubert’s smirk disappeared and he gracefully rose from his seat to the empty space beside Byleth. 

“Factually, only half of that is expected of us,” he corrected, facing the window as though he were speaking about the latest news of the Empire. “Of course we are responsible for Vestra and it’s people and perhaps there will be a paltry number dinners and balls expected of us year round, but as for the rest? We are not nobles as they were before. Our Emperor broke open the door to our cage and set us free to fly anywhere we wish....and Ferdinand is not a reliable source of information.”

Byleth lifted her hand to her chest. He was right, of course; gone were the beastly nobles and noble beasts alike, who wished to use them in their wicked games.

She was flesh and blood and _beating heart_, now. 

“I suppose half of my worries are manageable for us,” Byleth said. “But it wasn’t _just _Ferdinand. It was also Bernadetta, Lindhart, Caspar, _and_ our dear Emperor.”

Hubert took the stack of bound parchment from Byleth’s lap and set them atop his own, his cape fluttering over her arm as he leaned to do so, with a roll of his eyes.

“No doubt they sought to comfort you. To indulge you in a list of peaceful traditions now that you are not required to be at war. Or fight at all, at present,” he said.

He gazed at her, the scenery from the window no longer holding Hubert’s scrutiny.

Byleth simply nodded.

“But it did the opposite, of course. You were raised a mercenary, taught us warfare, and went to war yourself thereafter. It isn’t hunting those that slither in the dark that frightens you, but the trappings of a life you have yet to know,” Hubert said.

Byleth glanced at her ring and nodded again, glad that Hubert had dug up the root of her flowering anxieties. Gladder still that _he_ was the one pulling it from her by the stem, a steady hand with no other motive than to seek the answer to his question.

“I do not plan on abandoning you to the Vestra estate while I serve our Emperor. Do you recall what I said some time ago? In this second life called peace, we are a couplet of birds and I will not fail to protect you, even from the horrors of keeping a house,” Hubert concluded.

Byleth gave a wane smile and looked upon the ring fastened to Hubert’s finger, the ring her father had surely cherished as she did now. 

“I think I was surely meant to be your wife,” Byleth said, after a number of silent minutes.

Hubert kissed her then.

And the carriage was not so bad.


	2. Neverending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angsty bit of Dorothea/Edelgard because not everyone can bear to walk the path they started forever. Unedited.

The candles flickered to life with a sweep of her hand. Flickered out. Flickered back to existence. Flic--

Her hand stilled at the sound of a knock and a firm call of “Dorothea”.

She knocked over her chair to cross the room. To fling open the door and see white hair and violet eyes.

“Edie,” she breathed. “You’re back.”

The Emperor smiled warmly before taking Dorothea’s hand to kiss it. Not quite satisfied, Edelgard pressed the hand to her cheek, cradling her own face with Dorothea’s hand. 

“I was going to bring flowers, but I remembered how cavalier you are about re-gifting,” Edelgard said.

Dorothea kissed her, her eyes wet and hands trembling. “You’re right. I’d have gifted them right back to you.”

Their lips met again and Dorothea thought her heart might stop beating from how wonderful the moment was. She pulled Edelgard into the room before reaching forward, flushing their bodies against each other, to shut the door.

“My Dorothea, I missed you terribly,” Edelgard whispered, tucking strands of brown hair behind her lover’s ear. Swiping tears from her cheeks. Pressing soft kisses to her jaw.

Dorothea shook her head lightly, flushed from the sudden onslaught of affection after almost a year of naught but sparse letters. 

She stumbled back, untangling from the embrace, and almost tripped over the fallen vanity chair. Edelgard smiled wanely and bent to set it up right, her hair mussed and loose in her horned buns.

“I missed you too, Edie. I missed you_ so _much,” Dorothea said, her stomach churning. “How long can you stay now that you’ve done away with their leader?”

Edelgard’s smile dropped and Dorothea’s raised bitterly.

“I have a month more or less to myself before I must assist Hubert with a pressing enemy,” Edelgard said, smoothing her hand over top of the upright chair.

“Ah.”

Edelgard moved to hold Dorothea’s hand and met only a flinch of resistance, but it was enough to set the Emperor on edge. She interlaced their fingers tightly and stared at their joined hands. 

“It’ll be over soon, ‘thea. Those that slither have almost been rooted out completely and then--”

“And then there will be more to conquer still,” Dorothea whispered. She pulled back her hand. “That’s why my students worship you.”

“I don’t understand,” Edelgard said.

Dorothea laughed, the kind that she usually reserved for hungry eyed men and disrespectful students, and her eyes were tired when they looked to Edelgard.

“It won’t be over soon, Edie, because you won’t _let_ it. And they all love you for it; for the way you hack away at the darkness day after day so they won’t need to,” Dorothea said. 

Edelgard turned stiff, her chin raising and eyes flickering over Dorothea’s face methodically. “Of course there will always be dangers and responsibilities, but I meant what I said about us living side by side for the entirety of our lives. _You_ were the one that decided to come here, Dorothea.”

The lights flickered out at the twitch of Dorothea’s hand.

“I’m not like you, Edie. I can’t fight anymore wars. This is all I _can_ do.”

Another twitch of fingers brought Edelgard’s frustrated face to light.

“I’ve never asked you to. Coming with me to the capital is hardly entrenching yourself in another war,” Edelgard sighed.

Shaking her head, Dorothea lightly sat on the chair Edelgard was still standing by. “Isn’t it?”

Dorothea could not simply leave the life she had created, the peace she was cultivating the from the bloody ground _she _had helped soak. The parts of the empire that had once belonged to Dimitri and Claude were so in need of nourishing, their people so in need of hope, that Dorothea knew with a sudden clarity that life at the capital was impossible. 

She took Edelgard’s hand that was still placed on the chair by her shoulder and held it in both her hands. Dorothea knew that the schools and orphanages she was seeing built were not fit to leave and even if they were, Dorothea would only move on to build more, and Edelgard would not follow.

Dorothea knew then, as though she had known it for years and only just allowed the thought speak, that she would never go back to the capital. That she would never stand beside her classmates and professor and dearest Edie like she once had, when her largest worry had been chasing away loneliness. That she would never use any part of herself to take a life again, not for anyone.

Dorothea knew Edelgard would never stop, that no matter how many times she promised, the Emperor of Adrestia would keep fighting until her axe was forced from her hand. That a peaceful kingdom would not come from anything less than Edelgard’s life spent in never ending battle. 

And, even then, when was a kingdom peaceful enough? Dorothea couldn’t say. Just as Edelgard could not be satisfied.

Dorothea’s breath caught in her throat as she readied to say what she had been bottling up for years. 

“To be with you as I long to, to walk by your side, would be. I cannot fight again, Edie. And, I won’t go to the capital, to wring my hands in your absence. My hands....you know, they are stained so terribly that some days I can’t leave them bare, even if it seems mad to say so. I see their faces too. Dimitri and Claude and even silly Sylvain and all the rest come to my dreams and ask me if it was worth it. If their deaths made this world better,” Dorothea sobbed, her wet face pressing painfully to their joined hands over the back of the chair. Her cheek bone digging into Edelgard’s hand as Dorothea was weighed down by her regrets.

“I know you must. But, I can’t chase you anymore, Edie,” Dorothea finished.

Edelgard bent her head to to rest atop Dorothea’s, her free hand entangling in long brown hair as she too wept.

“I love you, my Dorothea.”

The opera star of long days past tilted her head up and felt hot tears fall to mix with her own. Saw white hair and violet eyes, but couldn’t bear to smile, even though she desperately wished to give the woman she loved so dearly one last piece of happiness before they parted.

“I’ll love you every day, Edie,” Dorothea said back and caught Edelgard’s neck before pushing her down for a kiss, something more tangible than a smile, she supposed.

The lights flickered out as they pressed as much love into one meeting of bodies as they could manage, their hands leaving bruises as the kiss became not enough. As their breathes grew heated and their clothes became nothing but barriers they set out break past. They gave one another everything, until they fell asleep, nothing but two bodies.

Dorothea smiled in the darkness when Edelgard left, when their souls settled back into their flesh, knowing her last battle was over. 

And she could rest.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on my tumblr: bylethdreams. I will be posting new drabbles in this collection on here after I post them there, mostly to keep them all together! 
> 
> I really loved all of these characters and wanted to explore their post-war experiences more! I'm not restricting myself to just the epilogue pairings! I will also be overlapping pairings (for instance, byleth/hubert and hubert/ferdinand) from time to time. Most of these drabbles won't really be connected, per se other than that they all have to do with Black Eagle Strike Force!
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
